Author's Note: Hey all, it's Volo. The semester is back in full swing now, so uploads on chapters will probably slow down like they already have. But don't worry, I'll still be writing these when I have time. You know the saying about work, play, and their tenuous relationship.

Anyway, I'm excited to finally get into the meat and potatoes of this first adventure in Candlekeep.

For any who want to know, the party is composed of a monk (Ruby), a wizard (Weiss), a rogue (Blake), and a barbarian (Yang). Currently they do not have a healer, so a prayer to the dice gods for their safety is in order.


Rushing into strange magical doorways whose destinations are yet unknown is a wonderful way to very quickly be dispatched and left to be found by the next unfortunate souls to wander into the same fate.

Which is an interesting factoid for the adventuring party at hand, as they soon found that they were not the only 'guests' in this dimensional pocket. A tall, round, balding man of roughly 60 years of age stood bewildered in the foyer they stepped into. As the group gathered their bearings, he began to smile and let out a relieved laugh, clapping his hands in their direction as he approached.

"My goodness, welcome, fine seeker-folk!" he began, quickly moving from one member to another, shaking their hands fiercely, "Words alone cannot express how very thankful I am that you came when you did!"

Yang looked puzzled at her roughly jostled hand and asked, "And what's got you in such a good mood? Mister…"

"Matreous!" he said with vigor, shaking a finger in triumph above his head, "I am the scholar Matreous, and I have been trying as many different command words I could think of for the past thirty minutes to open that door! I would be utterly deprived of the instruments I require to properly study this artifact," he said, feigning theatrical dismay as he produced an onyx figurine of an imp from his flowing and intricate green robes.

"And you found that figure in here? Wherever here is…" Weiss mused, taking in the strangely bare wooden hallway they stood in.

"Why, yes my fellow mage, I did, indeed. That's just the pickle, though. I'd love to continue searching this place for whatever other treasures it may hold, but I feel I may be of better help on the outside. That book you used to find this door is a personal copy of mine made from a book in Candlekeep's library. Those notes in the margin are mine. I feel I'd be better suited to keeping the door open on the outside. I'd be ever-so-grateful if you could adventure in my stead through the halls of this place. All I ask in return for… whatever it is you find… is a detailed account of where you went and what you faced."

"Sure!" Ruby piped in cheerily.

"All right, I guess," Yang intoned quizzically.

A grunt of assent could barely be heard from Blake.

"Then I suppose it's settled then, Matreous," Weiss finalized, "We'll be out in no time with talk of riches of all sorts, I have no doubt."

Matreous made for the door then, remarking as he went, "You've managed to assuage any doubt I had as well. I shall see you all in -"

Suddenly the man let out a shriek uncharacteristic of his previous demeanor, akin to a wizened-looking greyhound yipping like a chihuahua. The statuette he held aloft to examine glowed with a hellish aura, as the onyx material dissipated, and the creature jumped to life. Quickly, it flew to the doorway Matreous made his way out from, shutting it with a force not congruent with its small form.

Ruby rushed to the doorway, banging on the frame and pulling on the knobs, as she shouted, "Mr. Matreous! We'll find a way out from inside and come out to help! Hold tight for a little while!"

Turning quickly to the rest of the group, Blake pulled her hood down and quickly formed a plan.

"All right then, if we have any hope of finding our own way out, we search systematically. Up and down each hall, and whatever higher floors get the same treatment. Let's stick together as well. Strength in numbers and all that."

"Where do we start?" Weiss asked, outwardly composed yet inwardly panicking.

"Let's take it from one end of the hall to the other, yeah?" Yang proposed, "No sense in re-treading ground in going one way only to turn back and go the other."

"So I ask again: Where do we start?" Weiss repeated.

Looking down the left side of the hall, Ruby saw a glass door. From what she could see…

"Roll a Perception check for me."

"Not great. A ten."

…The door had a glass surface, but it didn't seem to lead anywhere. The outside simply looked as though it was covered in a heavy layer of… purple fog?

"Why not just go down the hall here, door by door?" Ruby asked, walking down to the glass door. Opening the door, she was pleasantly surprised by the presence of a stone patio. Semi-circular in shape, the flagstones were lit subtly by the indigo miasma surrounding the mansion. Looking out into the distance, it seemed to go on forever. Ruby shuddered at the thought of getting lost out there, and turned back inside.

"Well, the patio's a bust. Next room?" she offered, returned with the party voicing their agreement.


Entering the next room, they saw piles upon piles of books stacked high up to the ceiling bookended by shelves housing more volumes of knowledge, including a pair of freestanding shelves in the middle of the room. In the corners of the room, small reading desks were paired with cozy-looking red velvet armchairs.

Walking through, Weiss noted the subjects of most of the books. Magic, science, religion, astrology, planar travel, and some fewer, more rare volumes of poetry, myth, and folk tales. Seems whoever created this mansion was the well-read sort.

Quickly, that train of thought was derailed as the rest of the party entered. Ruby gravitated towards one of the desk seats near the back of the room while Yang slumped into one near the door, resting her boots on the desk. Blake, however, had begun running around the room as if possessed, swiping books from the shelves and filling her pack. As she ran about, a book she grabbed from the piles suddenly flew from her hand back to its original position. She stood confused for a moment before the pile it landed on started to shake.

In less than a second, a swarm of the previously stationary stationery flew from its resting place and battered one of the freestanding shelves, tipping it over in the direction of Weiss.

"Make a Dexterity saving throw!"

"What? Ooooh, of all the asinine… Nine!"

"Fantastic! That means…"

The shelf the swarm attacked shifted in place precariously before tipping over and collapsing on Weiss. Though unhurt, she found movement difficult from the shoulder down. She was restrained by the fallen bookcase!

"Guys! A little help?" she shouted from the floor.

Her friends, however, were a little more focused on the enemy at hand, readying for battle.

"Roll initiative!"

Weiss, seeing that no one was coming to her aid, decided to take matters into her own hands.

"Fine, I'll do it myself!" she said, grunting in effort against the weight of the bookshelf.

"Make an Athletics check."

"Not exactly my strong-suit… But an 18 will work!"

"Yes, it will. Sadly, that's your action. You still have your bonus action, if you have a spell to cast."

It was all Weiss could do to free herself, as the effort of lifting the shelf took quite a bit more out of her than she thought it would. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she waited for her teammates to engage.

Which would prove to be a poor decision on her part, as the swarm of tomes made its way toward Ruby, crowding the girl with fluttering hard-cover spines as they flew about her, some impacting against her leaving bruises and paper cuts. In response, she took a moment to find an opening in the storm of volumes and ran swiftly across the room to stand next to Weiss.

"Hey. This thing hurts. Got anything to deal with this in that spellbook of yours?" she asked, hopeful they'd end this fight quickly.

"I have lots of spells to hurt things back, if that's what you mean. I don't have anything to help those injuries along," Weiss responded.

As they spoke, a great roar came from Yang, rushing up to the swarm in a fervor before letting loose a bright breath of flame upon the mass of books. In a blaze, most of the books in the swarm withered and burned to ash.

"We done screwing around? Come on! Let's finish this thing!" She shouted to the rest of them.

Almost immediately after Yang's call to action, a dagger flew right under her arm and straight through the flying crowd. A silent curse could be heard from the hooded tabaxi it came from.

In the moment of distraction from Blake, Weiss capitalized, casting a small jet of blue magical energy into the swarm. For just one second, all the tomes left in the swarm lined up nicely, and in just as much time they were dispatched by a hole through each made by that magic missile.

For a minute, they stood still ready, waiting for the swarm to get back up and attack once more. When it was clear that it wouldn't, they returned to searching the library, and Blake swiped a particularly ornate letter opener while the others were looking elsewhere. All at the same time, they converged on a strange book on one shelf. It looked to be normal except for the large, golden "R" on the spine.

"Is there anything written in the book?"

"No, Yang. In fact, the book doesn't even open. It seems to be a prop book, made for some other purpose than reading. You just found your first puzzle book, to be used later."

"Okay, so someone needs to keep track of these puzzle books then. It's probably gonna spell out the command word to leave."

"Right then, I think that's all we're going to get from here. Next room!" Blake called, the group following to the next door down the hall.


The proceeding room contained a battered wooden mannequin and a wooden rack holding staves and daggers, all lit with a lavender tint from a window streaming in light from the outside, hearkening back to the view of the outside from the patio. The floor was covered in stains and scorch marks, likely from various spells. Very clearly, this room went well-used. However, try as they might…

"With Investigation rolls that high, most of you are sure you can move on from here without issue. Except you, Yang. You're utterly convinced there's something there that they missed."

"Well fine, guys. It's not gonna be my fault later when we're missing one puzzle book and it turns out that magic cleaning broom had the last one we needed," Yang warned as they moved to the room further down the hall.

The next room they stood ready to enter was directly across from the locked entrance. Curiously, the door was left ajar, enough for one of Yang's boots to comfortably slip through without touching the door or the frame.

Expecting a fight, they all paused for a count of three before bursting through the door, rushing in and yelling battlecries only to find a room decorated comfortably with dark wood walls, paintings of landscapes and portraits adorning them, and a far wall covered ceiling-to-floor in bookshelves. Curled up on one of the chairs not occupied by piles of still more books was a fluffy black cat similar in appearance to Blake.

"Hey, little guy," Blake said, crouching down to eye-level with the smaller feline with significantly more of a gentle tone to her voice, "who left you here? Are you all alone?" she asked, giving it a scratch under the chin.

"Make an Animal Handling check."

"Natural one…"

"Finally, I've been waiting for one of those!"

The cat took the scratches under the chin gracefully, stood up from its lounging position, stared directly into the eyes of Blake, and hissed angrily as it arched its back.

"Hey, hey, hey, hold on buddy," Ruby soothed, rushing over to calm the cat, "It's okay. The bigger cat's not here to take your territory, it's okay, she's nice," she lulled quietly, running her hand over its arched back trying to sedate its defense of its turf.

"Gonna need another Animal Handling check, this time from Ruby."

"Does a twelve do it?"

"Thankfully…"

Smoothing its ruffled fur by Ruby's hand, the territorial feline cooled its violent demeanor and slithered into Ruby's arms, curling up in her grasp, looking up at her with its sleepy amber eyes before closing them again and readjusting to be more comfortable in the warm hold she had on it. Where the cat had previously been sitting was another of the puzzle books, this one with the letter "I" on its spine. Seems as if it made for a comfortable place to rest.

"Thanks, Ruby," Blake muttered as she picked up the puzzle book, "I'd have been a scratching post for 'Cuddles' over here if you hadn't come along."

"No problem. I'm used to dealing with pets. My old dog back home can get really unruly sometimes."


Taking a moment to rest in the study, Ruby quietly admired the cat sleeping in her arms, Blake respectfully stood at the other end of the room as she sized up any valuables, Yang slumped in the previously occupied armchair and drifted off to sleep, while Weiss busied herself around the bookcases, flipping through several volumes skimming their contents lightly.

After a short rest, Ruby's bruises from the fight with the swarm looking and feeling much better, it seemed Weiss in all her research through the books on the wall had something to say to the group.

"All right ladies, after an hour of some busywork, I think I've pieced together a few things about the nature of this place. Firstly, its owner. Apparently, this place was created for a powerful mage and priestess of Mystra, Goddess of Magic, named Fistandia. Most of the books on the shelves in this room are her memoirs."

"And that's interesting because…" Yang prompted, motioning for Weiss to continue explaining.

"Well, one, because Matreous asked us to tell him any useful information we find in exchange for the treasures we find here, and two, because of what comes next: She frequented Candlekeep to further her studies into the arts of magic, and for her service in expanding those arts, Mystra granted her this permanent extradimensional mansion to facilitate longer and more fruitful visits each time she came to Candlekeep."

"So what we're in isn't a permanent casting of Magnificent Mansion from some font of strong magic, so much as it is a divine gift of a permanent Magnificent Mansion," Blake astutely noted.

"Exactly. And here's the interesting part: fearing that a visitor might get lost in the mansion and be trapped, Fistandia hid the command word to open it from the inside on seven puzzle books that have been stashed around the mansion, of which we already have two, the "I" and the "R" books."

"Maybe it's 'Library' or something. It is seven letters, and I guess it kinda fits the theme? Maybe that's too obvious. That's probably one of the first that Matreous tried," Yang thought out loud.

"Whatever it is, we need to figure it out! Matreous and Irony could be in serious danger!" Ruby reminded the group with a pained expression.

"Oh, by the way, Weiss, roll an Investigation check for me since you were searching the shelves for information."

"Hm? But I've already found all this information. What more would I need?"

"It's just for me to check, don't worry."

"All right, sure. A thirteen."

"In that regard," Weiss began, pointing to a book low on the leftmost shelf, "That book there is a trigger for a secret passage's opening. It's the same kind of prop-book as the puzzle books, but it's unmarked and bolted in somehow. We have two choices, either we keep exploring this floor, or we see where the passage takes us."


After a very unceremonious flipping of a coin, the party decided to continue exhausting all options on the current floor. The cat in Ruby's arms jumped from her grasp as they left the study, and entered the room they were about to, as that door was ajar similar to the previous. It seemed the doors were left like that to allow the cat free travel about the mansion.

As they gently opened the door to the new room, their noses were assaulted with aromas of various stages of food preparation; frying, searing, boiling, steaming, and otherwise. A large iron oven took up the western wall and counterspace, while the rest was strewn about with a myriad of pots, pans, and cooking utensils. The strangest part of this room aside from its seemingly active nature was how clean it was. Utterly void of the dust and general neglected aura of the party's previous accommodations. They soon understood why.

Floating down from the higher cabinetry on small, flapping wings was a pair of small forms that landed on the table on the eastern side of the room. What landed was a strange pair of hamster-sized gargoyles made of what seemed to be clay. One was round and squat, the other was thin and tall.

"How can we be of help to our honored guests?" the tall, thin one said in a high-pitched squeaky voice, bowing low as it did, "Cooking? Cleaning? Mending your clothes, perhaps?"

"We've been completely starved for any household tasks to take care of since the masters left," the squat, fat one said in a sad slouch before quickly perking back up, "We've had only the company of the cats and the faerie dragons of the arboretum to keep us working. All we've had to do was clean up after them and prepare meals."

"Oh?" Ruby hummed in surprise, "Well if you guys are hurting for some to-dos, why don't we start simple. Can we ask you a few questions?"

"Anything you like, and we'll try to be as straightforward as possible!" the tall one said.

"Let's start with your names then," Ruby started, "You guys have names, right?"

"Yup! I'm Cumin! And that's Coriander!" Cumin answered excitedly, a great deal of performance put into pointing to its fellow.

"Okay, next," Ruby continued with a satisfied smile, "We've been looking around in the study, and found mention of a lady named 'Fistandia.' Do either of you know who that is?"

"Yeah!" Coriander began, "Cumin was made by that lady! I'm not, though. Freyot's the one who made me!"

"And where are they now?" she asked.

"We don't know!" Cumin responded with a flourish, "They both left a long time ago, and they didn't say where they were going. The only thing they told us was to leave the books with the shiny, letter-branded spines alone, and that they were very important."

"So you know about them? Do you know where they are? We found two, and then we learned that these books spell out the command word we need to leave," Ruby explained.

"Miss Fistandia used to go into the planetarium and not come out for a long time," Coriander thought out loud, tapping a foot and scratching its chin, "If that's not a place for one, I'll jump in the pepper shaker."

"Oh, and be careful!" Cumin added, "Something keeps building piles of books in the library. Can't for the life of me figure out what it is that's doing it…"

"That? Oh, the books were actually an animated swarm. We took care of it," Ruby responded with a dismissive wave of the hand, "Anything else you wanna tell us? Anything to look out for?"

"Well, I noticed you've met Witch. Any other cats you see around the mansion, send them back here please. It's about feeding time," Coriander entreated.

"And try not to hurt the faerie dragons in the arboretum," Cumin implored, "They might be a bit of a nuisance, but the most they'll do is cause some mischief. Try to avoid them if you can."

At that moment, as the questioning finished, Ruby and the rest turned to face the rest of the kitchen and noticed a corner in which several uniquely stylized cat-food bowls were placed. There, the familiar cat now known to be named 'Witch' was quietly eating from a pitch black porcelain bowl beside a heavy-looking ball of a cat with a collar rolling its neck into folds. The nametag read "Big Man," and he had a serving dish the size of a salad bowl sitting in front of him. He had reached the point in which he could no longer lean over the side to eat, and had begun batting at individual pieces in the bowl in hopes he'd catch one on the upswing.

Learning her lesson from dealing with Witch, Blake decided to take more of an interest in the strange creatures that kept the kitchen running. Something about them was… off. She couldn't quite place it, but as she scrutinized them…

"Roll an Arcana check, if you please."

"That's disappointing. A three."

…She found only that they knew the curiosity of felines all too well, and met her gaze with a question.

"Why are you looking at us like that?" Coriander inquired.

"I feel like there is more to you two than we know. Not that you're hiding anything, that much I can tell. But there's something about you I can't help but think is as of yet still obscured."

"Nothin' to do but dig it up then, Kitty-cat," Yang exclaimed, clapping Blake on the shoulder, "Why don't I give it a look, see if I can't piece together what makes these little guys tick."

"All right, then. An Arcana check from Yang now."

"Why am I so accidentally smart? I got a thirteen."

As she looked at them, really looked at them, the idea of what Blake was after was on the tip of her tongue, but as she tried to talk through it, all that ended up coming out was babbles of effort in trying to remember. One word did surface, however.

"Homunculi."

"THAT'S IT!" Yang shouted, "They're Homunculi! They talked about being made and stuff, right? Well, not a lot of things are just made by wizards. Usually you'd need an artificer for anything more complicated. Homunculi, though, I'm pretty sure you don't need an artificer for. I don't know all the specifics of it, but I think we're at least close to it."

"Then why don't we come back here later and see if we can't figure it out when we're here again," said Weiss, one foot out the door, already moving on.


A/N: So like I said in the beginning author's note, updates to the story may slow down a bit due to my need to focus on my studies. Obviously, that slow-down has already started, considering we're well into February. I will try to write as much of this as I can in my free time.

Anyway, I'm very happy we got our first critical failure of the campaign in Blake's mishap with Witch. As an unrelated note, let it be known that, CURRENTLY, I do not have plans to write any romance or shipping or whatever of any kind. It's possible that may change in the future as the Candlekeep campaign story goes on and characters evolve, grow, and gain notoriety.

The hour Weiss used to search the study for information was also taken as a short rest, which means that Ruby spent her only hit die to heal back to full. Might need to do some balance adjustments to help not kill the party in a level one adventure. Especially when the next chapter might be pretty heavy on the combat. While I do want this story to be completely dice-driven, it doesn't exactly help when the dice dictate that the main characters have to die, and somehow the story continues anyway.

What I'm trying to say is I'm discovering that I have to balance the dice-only integrity with what makes a good and engaging story. I am fully prepared to do that, because while this is an exploration of D&D as a storytelling device, I am here first and foremost to tell a story. Not just to have three chapters of a campaign that never gets off the ground because of repeating TPKs in a room full of like 49 goblins. I have to say I'm enjoying the challenge of this balance, and I'll have to see where it takes me before I make any big judgment calls. Though, for future reference when DMing, I'll probably lower the swarm of books' damage dice from 2d4 to 1d4.

As of right now, the only big fudge I've had to make has been Ruby's hit die healing. Initially she rolled a two, but I was concerned with how that would play out with later combat encounters, so I decided to roll one more time and get her back to full (luckily, her next heal roll was a full eight, so she got back to maximum).